This article doesn't refer to "lost" space per se. But it's an interesting read, though the author seems not entirely enthusiastic about the subject.

From Buzz:

Women only communities: feminism’s past or future?

Lottie Gross

The only sound to be heard is the clack of my shoes on the hard floor as I step inside the chapel - twenty Carmelite nuns stand before me undisturbed and immersed in prayer.

The only sound to be heard is the clack of my shoes on the hard floor as I step inside the chapel for Vespers. Twenty Carmelite nuns stand before me undisturbed and immersed in prayer. They live in silence and upon entering the order they vow to let go of their material possessions, to be obedient to God, and to submit themselves to a life of chastity.

Stain glass windows tell the story of Carmlite nuns in the Quidenham chapel

No, I haven’t travelled back in time to meet these women but in fact to the tiny village of Quidenham in Norfolk. Sister Shelagh broke the rule of silence for me as I asked her what it’s like to live in such an intensely female environment.

“There is a deep bond of unity between us and it’s very supportive, living in a community. I know I couldn’t live this life on my own, so I’m very grateful for the support of the community.”

Sister Shelagh was married before she became a Carmelite nun. After ten years in her relationship she says she still hadn’t found contentment. She said turning to a life of monasticism, without our sexual counterparts, gave her a sense of contentment and comfort.

“It’s very rewarding and it gives full scope for human relationships, there’s no sense of having to cut bits of ones self off in order to live this life.”

Echoes of a patriarchal past

I’ve spent seven months investigating women-only communities, how they live and the issues they face. From Kenya to Brunei and now the UK, this convent is my last stop.

While I won’t disagree that all of the Sisters at the convent seem tranquil, I can’t help but think that chastity, obedience and silence echo past expectations of women in our once patriarchal society.

In today’s culture feminism and gender equality are two pressing and widely debated movements for the development of society and have been gaining momentum for over 100 years since the struggles of the Suffragettes in the late 18th Century. While all-female communities seem to be empowering women I wonder if they are holding women back.

This is not the case says Kat Pinder. As an organiser of RadFem 2013, a radical feminist conference in London, Kat considers herself a women’s liberationist and gender abolitionist. She says that all-female communities are essential for women’s liberation, “they are spaces where women can find themselves and remember themselves and understand who we are outside of male society”.

“A group of nuns, for example, who are based around a patriarchal religion, may not brand themselves as feminists initially but I have spoken a lot of women who have spent a lot of time in women only spaces and that’s how they’ve ended up coming to feminism, even though what they were doing was not necessarily organised around feminism.”

Jenny Eaton, from the Eos personal development programme for women, has seen this theory in motion and she says that women often become conscious feminists as a result of women only environments.

Active feminists

“Women who have never thought like it before begin look at the world in a different way because they have a different experience of being in groups of women because, with the odd exception, I have found that women learning and training together bond and they bond very quickly.

“Women who have a positive experience of personal growth in a group of women it actually makes them a feminist in a more active way.”

Of course, it’s not just religion that brings women together and not all these women are feminists. So what makes them want to be part of a world without men?

Clinical psychologist Bhavna Negandhi says that, as women, it’s in our nature to thrive in all-female environments:

“If you look at it from a biological and historical perspective, an evolutionary perspective, that’s what women did. Men used to go out hunting and the all female community was left behind to help each other out with children, companionship, emotions, and have general chit chat.

“Even now, while men turn to women for emotional support, women don’t seem to get the same from men. Women prefer to get their emotional support from other females and maybe wanting to be a part of all female group is probably for that emotional and even practical support.”

 A Kenyan cooperative

Judy came to the village four years ago

and has since learned attended school and

learned English

It was in the Kenyan Chalbi desert where I met a group of women who do just this. Having escaped from forced marriage to a HIV positive man three times her age, twenty-year-old Judy, pictured, found the Umoja Women’s Group: a community of women working and living together, where there are no men allowed.

She told me how when she arrived in the small town of Archer’s Post the women here took her in as their child and looked after her.

“When I came here, I heard that the village called Umoja was for women with problems, so when I arrived the women here took me in like their child and now I am ok, I am happy.”

Since its modest beginning in the 90s, when the village was just one mud hut and handful of destitute women, the community has grown enormously. Now the 48 women who live here, belonging to many different tribes, make and sell traditional tribal jewellery to tourists in order to keep the village running and have recently built a preschool for their children.

Bhavna says that when it’s not religion bringing women together, it’s the need for support of some kind like that of the women of Umoja, but there will always be competition and rivalry, there will always been bitchiness.

They WRAC Association meet each year to

catch-up with old friends and celebrate their

contributions to the British Army.

Surreptitious sabotage and sisterhood

As an American teen, writer Jillian Lauren lived in an opulent palace in the colourful city of Brunei occupied by over 20 women who were all competing for the attention of one man: the Prince of Brunei, Jefri Bolkiah.

In this modern version of the traditional harem there was fierce competition, surreptitious sabotage and shifting alliances among the girls. But even while they were contending with one another, it wasn’t always a mean girls act.

“It was a really competitive environment in terms of the relationships between us girls, but there were some real friendships that arose out of it and I do think that women will take care of each other and that we did on some level.”

It is this consistent theme that runs throughout the groups that I have met in this investigation: this sense of sisterhood. Gender segregation has been a habitual part of society in the past, from single-sex education to the units in the armed forces, and men and women have fought for equality and integration in such environments. The Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) was disbanded in the 90s after women demanded they be treated equally to men. Now both sexes live and work together throughout the military but some are still not happy. Ex-members of the WRAC say they often preferred the single sex structure, leading to questions about whether it is actually gender integration rather than segregation that is holding women back.

In the Village of Women - The Importance of Closed Spaces

We are often told that the desire for women's space is somehow racist, middle-class, colonialist, transphobic, etc. Absolutely not true. In fact it's often demanded by poor women, women of color, and women outside North America or Europe. This fantastic piece makes an eloquent argument for women's space within an African context.

From Miss Milly B:

COLUMN // IN THE VILLAGE OF WOMEN – THE IMPORTANCE OF CLOSED SPACES

In the Village of Women

In the face of the daily, grinding violence meted out on women like murdered lesbian Motshidisi Pascalina, why should it come as a surprise that black girls are demanding their own spaces?

In the Samburu region of Kenya there are four villages inhabited and run by women only. One day in 1990, a Kenyan woman named Rebecca Lolosoli left her husband and village after she was beaten by the men in the village for speaking out against the rape of Samburu women by British soldiers.

It was this – and the fact that Samburu girls and women are forced to undergo genital mutilation, marry old men, and stay in marriages bonded by beatings and hard labour – that led to her and 14 other women leaving their homes to establish Umoja, a new village where no men were allowed. In the 26 years since, Umoja has become a place where women run their own affairs, look after their own land, rear their boy and girl children, protect and feed one another, create their own economy and interact with men on their own terms.

They can hire male labour from other villages if they want. They can have lovers and relationships with men but are only allowed to conduct them outside the village, though there are many who have sworn off men completely. And another three matriarchal villages have been established in the region, some of which allow men to stay provided they follow the rules. Naturally, the response from men outside the villages has been violently negative, with men occasionally beating the women and stealing the profits they make from selling handmade necklaces to tourists.

What began as a response to violence has become a model for oppressed women to take control, to make safe spaces, to pursue their needs. To take is to stop asking. Which is also the motivation for the rise of black-female-only spaces around the world and in South Africa today. Except, in urban areas where female oppression is a little more sophisticated – disguised in legislation, corporate culture, bedroom culture, magazine culture, organized religion and so-called natural responsibilities like motherhood – women are yet to start their own towns.

Instead there are spaces like the Cape Town-based monthly event For Black Girls Only, in which hundreds of black women come together to talk about things only they understand as the most oppressed people, to buy and sell at black woman-owned market stalls, to picnic and to party. Of course, they are seeing resistance from those who don’t understand the need for them in contemporary racist, rapey, rainbow South Africa.

These kinds of spaces exist because we have the blood of Motshidisi Pascalina on our hands as a society. Non-black lesbians and gay men are not prescriptively mutilated and murdered for their sexual orientation. For them, there isn’t a term to describe a special kind of rape only performed on black lesbians.

These spaces exist so that black women don’t have to explain themselves and why they are angry, sad, traumatised, paralysed by an air that only they are forced to breathe. They exist so that black women can, for a few hours, exist outside the presence of a perpetual subjectivity to male and racial domination. They exist because of those who don’t understand why they need to exist.

What would a women’s village or town look like in South Africa if we had the resources and impetus to start one, which we do? I enjoy imagining this place because it’s important to envision what we want while we are fighting against what we don’t want.

Would it be a sanctuary or a retreat where women can spend six months or year at then go back to their regular lives? Or would be a forever place? What would the grounds to entry be? How would the racial dynamics that exist in South Africa be dealt with? How would we ensure that classism does not create an exclusive hierarchy?

There would likely need to be an entry-level course on unlearning how women see themselves through the eyes of men, an unlearning of patriarchy. The Constitution would be written by the villagers and revised every couple of years. Education would prioritize the role of women in world history, stories history books have deliberately left out. Courses on design, architecture and town planning would have a female approach to space. The cooking and the cleaning would be shared. Agriculture would be a subject under life skills. The village would be self-sustainable, placing food production, home creation, physical and emotional healthcare as its top priorities. Menstruation and the reproductive system would be honored in a monthly moon ritual.

The economy would be designed to suit the wellbeing of the villagers and the environment. A custom-created spirituality in which nature is central, would be the foundation of all the pursuits of the village. The villagers would decide on a system regarding the participation of men. The villagers would wear whatever they want to wear, express love in ways they want to express it. There would be no centralised power. It would be a colony of functional, organised roles and responsibilities. But most importantly, this village would exist with the intention of replicating itself as its fundamental purpose.

Milisuthando Bongela This piece first appeared in City Press on Sunday 17 January 2016

Daisy Colony



Ponca City, Oklahoma-founded in 1892
after the United States opened the
Cherokee Outlet for white settlement
in the Cherokee Strip land run, the largest
land run in U.S. history 

Daisy Colony

Location: A few miles west of Ponca City, Oklahoma, USA

Founded: September 1892, though Annette (or Annetta) Daisy's homesteading efforts go back a few years before that

Closed: Unknown

This is a prime example of one random find leading to another. In other words, after tripping over Bethsheba, Oklahoma, I stumbled upon the Daisy Colony--yet another all-women community founded during the Oklahoma land runs of the 1890s. (While I am highlighting the effort of these white women to form their own communities, it is important to understand the entire context here, which was predicated on the forcible removal of the Cherokee and other native peoples from Oklahoma "Indian Territory" for European settlement.)

That said, meet the incredible Miss Annetta (or Annette) Daisy and her band of armed Amazons, who were biding their time till they could form their own town in Oklahoma.

From the New York Times, April 16, 1892:

ANNETTA DAISY'S AMAZONS
---

VENTURESOME YOUNG WOMEN IN OKLAHOMA.

---
TWELVE OF THEM ARE ENCAMPED IN A HIDING PLACE WITHIN THE BORDERS

EL RENO, Oklahoma, April 15.--The irrepressible Annetta Daisy, who has passed through two campaigns similar to this, again comes to the front in a new role--that of protector. She was shot in the rush of three years ago while "holding down" a claim which she had obtained by jumping from a running train. [Note: This apparently happened during the April 22, 1889 land rush near Edmund, Oklahoma. According to an earlier account in the New York Times, "She pluckily held her own, and, wounded as she was, secured her rifle and drove the intruder away. See link here.] On the eventful April 22 last year, she was thrown from a horse while rushing for a lot in Rocky Chandler and was nearly killed, but she secured the property she sought. [Note: The date is reported incorrectly. This latter incident actually took place in September 1891. See the New York Times story of September 30, 1891 here, which prematurely announced Daisy's death from the aforementioned horse.]

Now she heads a body of eleven female "sooners," all unmarried women, who are encamped in a deep gulch in County F, where they are awaiting the signal. They have escaped the military, so far, and will pretty surely succeed in their intentions, as their camp has been so carefully selected that the troops could pass within forty feet of it and not discover it. In the western part of that county is a series of wooden gulches, rendering the country almost impassable. In one of them, having an opening, but no outlet, and some 200 feet deep, is a little recess facing the south, so effectually concealed by the heavy cedars that not even a hundred searchers would suspect its existence. Here these venturesome young women have formed a camp, fully provisioned, where they propose to remain until they can make the runs for the tracts of land already selected, all in one body.

Each of the young women is armed with a rifle and a revolver, and as a whole they are fully capable of taking care of themselves. They have been there a week and have made for themselves shelters of cedar brush, where they are comfortable and free from all intrusion. Each woman has a horse, the grazing being excellent in the sheltered nook where they have a retreat.

Miss Daisy has been selected as Captain of this little company, her only purpose being to assist them in selecting homes in a new country. Among these women are two graduates from Smith College, cousins, and one graduate from Monticello College, Illinois.  All of them are educated and accustomed in the past to refined homes.

Miss Daisy came for provisions yesterday and departed this evening, intending to make a night's ride of fifty miles. She has with her a horse laden with necessities, with daily papers as dessert. She conversed freely with those of the newspaper correspondents with whom she became acquainted on a former occasion like this, but did not yield up the secret of her exact location. She had come in after a night's ride with a led horse, and after making all her purchases and securing a list of the allotments made to the Indians, she departed for her camp, expecting to reach it about 3 o'clock in the morning. Her company maintains military discipline, keeping an armed guard day and night. The members are not so fearful of intrusion as they are of the troops patrolling all the counties seeking for "sooners," who are ejected as soon as found. Miss Daisy said that her company was organized in Kansas City, and represents six States: Kentucky, 4; Missouri, 2; Texas, 1; Tennessee, 1; New-York, 2, and Illinois, 1. The eldest is twenty-six and the youngest twenty-four. Miss Daisy is a Kentuckian, although she has a claim and home in Oklahoma. She prides herself upon being able to outwit the troops and the army of Government officers who have been directed to exclude the speculators for the benefit of the "honest settlers," which she declares is a misnomer.

The combined capital of her company is $2,500. To prove it Miss Daisy showed her bank book. Their determination is to make homes for themselves, and in the prevailing style of Western men and women they propose to build a town, which appears to be an ambition that some time or another will be gratified. They do not want a town from which the male sex is to be excluded, but they have correspondents and friends who will join them in controlling it. When questioned regarding the "sooner" class of the law, Miss Daisy said they could conscientiously take oath, as they were not in lands upon which man can even live and they are simply camped there for self-protection.

There is no man in the camp, and if the party are accidentally discovered they will not permit any to even visit them. The known character of the Captain would prevent any man who has resided in this Territory any length of time from forcing his attentions upon them.

Given Annetta (or Annette) Daisy's easy familiarity with the press, it is not a big surprise to find out that she wrote for the newspapers herself. (This September 16, 1893 article in the New York Times on the Cherokee land run has been attributed to Daisy, though there is no byline.) 

In a December 23, 1893 article in the Star 
(in New Zealand!), the following progress report was provided on Daisy's Amazons:
A new feminine Utopia, from which man is excluded, has been established in the Cherokee Strip, U.S., and it bears the appropriate name of the Daisy Community. It was generally told in the newspapers prior to the opening of the Strip that Miss Annette Daisy, a Kentuckian of some celebrity as a boomer in previous land openings, was camped on the line with some forty spinsters and widows, and purposed [sic] leading them into the Strip to secure a section or so and establish a women's settlement. Miss Daisy and her project were lost sight of in the shuffle and scramble that followed the rush over the boarder. But the missionary found twenty-two of the Daisy Colonists settled on three-quarter sections, aggregating about 480 acres, a few miles west of Ponca. They had erected two houses and four rough shelters, and had begun to improve the land.  A horrid man secured the off quarter of the section, and they have been trying to buy him out, but he seems well pleased with his neighbours and declines to leave.

Then there was article that appeared in the Philadelphia Record on December 30, 1893:

Of the thirty-six women who, under the leadership of Miss Annette Daisy, made a run into the Cherokee Strip when it was opened last September, 22 have proved undaunted by the difficulties of their undertaking, and are busily engaged in perfecting a home with no man to make or mar. They are hauling the lumber themselves for a house of 15 rooms, which they will occupy, and are prepared to to do their own plowing, planting, etc. in the well-watered timbered section of 480 acres which they hold. They already have three teams, two cows, chickens and other stock, and neatly dressed in short skirts that come just below the knee, and are met by heavy woolen leggings that cover the legs from knee to ankle. They appear in fit condition to hold their own and carry out their plucky plan.

The same story appeared in the Daily Oklahoman, Edmond Sun-Democrat, and Cherokee Advocate (quoted here) in February 1894, and in many other papers as far away as Wanganui, New Zealand.

Ponca City (1930s)

This report, if accurate, suggests that the April 1892 homesteading effort (described in the long passage above regarding Daisy's Amazons) did not take, but that an effort commencing in September 1893 with a larger group did sustain itself--at least for a few months.

Some scholars have wondered if the Daisy Colony could have been the same settlement as Bathsheba, but since Bathsheba was reportedly long gone by 1894, that seems unlikely.

In the odd words of her premature 1891 obituary in the New York Times, Daisy was saluted as "a Kentucky girl and a Bohemian in every sense, with a spirit of gentleness in her little body that endeared her to all who came in contact with her." No doubt she was all of that and more.

Additional thoughts: Ever since I discovered Annette Daisy, I keep thinking how her life would make an amazing movie. Maybe the first-ever real lesbian Western? Not that Hollywood would touch it. But maybe some independent feminist and/or lesbian film maker?

Bathsheba (or Bethsheba), Oklahoma

Garfield County, Oklahoma (1895)

Bathsheba, Oklahoma (also known as Bethsheba, Oklahoma)

Location: Said to have been located somewhere in Garfield County between Enid (Garfield County) and Perry (Noble County), Oklahoma, USA. Also described as a "three hour horse ride west of Stillwater."

Opened: September 16, 1893 or thereabouts

Closed: About 12 weeks after it started--if it ever started at all

Bathsheba (or Bethsheba) is reportedly a women's ghost town, its exact location a mystery. At least Dr. John W. Morris was unable to determine its whereabouts in his book, Ghost Towns of Oklahoma (1977). As a result, he did not include a separate entry on the town he called Bethsheba, though he did observe the following (p. 19):

Bethsheba, probably the most peculiar of all ghosts towns in Oklahoma, was not written about because its specific location between Enid and Perry is not known. (Bethsheba was settled by women and exclusively for women. No males of any species--roosters, bulls, male horses, or men--were admitted to the settlement. It is said to have had a population of thirty-three, but twelve deserted after the first week. The remaining members disappeared one night and Bethsheba became a female ghost.

A slew of AP articles also ran on Bathsheba in 1981. See these examples in the Gadsden Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

In 2006, at the Cherokee Strip Museum site, it was reported that a local woman named Ronda Stucks was writing a book about the "all-woman community of Bathsheba," but I can find no evidence that this book was ever published. However, the following information about Bathsheba is dutifully conveyed:

Research at the Cherokee Strip Museum here discloses several interesting facts. The museum has copies of detailed articles about Bathsheba. One is from a 1982 edition of the Stillwater NewsPress and the other is an unattributed reproduction which appears to be from the Oklahoma Historical Society's Oklahoma Chronicles. The latter piece is signed by the late Robert E. Cunningham of Stillwater, the author of Perry, Pride of the Prairie, published in the late 1960s and now out of print. There is no byline on the newspaper article but it probably is based largely on Bob Cunningham's account.

Both of the above documents use the spelling "Bethsheba," not "Bathsheba," and no explanation is given. "As the name would indicate," Mr. Cunningham wrote, "it was a town of women, where male horses, male chickens and male hogs were excluded, along with the male of their own specie. This unusual town sprang up on the prairie in the Cherokee Strip a few days after the opening on September 16, 1893. Towns had a habit of appearing and disappearing on the Oklahoma prairie in those days, just like mirages, and Bethsheba lasted just about as long as mirages do.

"An early day news reporter from Kansas fixed the location of this town as midway between Perry and Enid," the article continues. "In its boom days Bethsheba had a mayor, a police chief and a city council. The principal duty of the police chief was to chase men away from the town. The village originally consisted of 33 members, but 12 of them deserted after the first week, and one was expelled when it was learned she had a razor in her possession, the reporter learned. The local court held that masculine implements were subversive to the vital principles of the community."

Visiting the town, the reporter recognized the mayor. She was a former Kansas woman who, when well beyond the bloom of youth, married a drummer, as traveling salesmen were called in those days. It later turned out that the drummer had a wife and seven children in another state. No wonder the mayor was bitter.

The reporter wrapped up his story with a flourish of rhetoric: "Let us waive the throes of blighted affection, and the pangs of a heart without an affinity, which must have driven them (the town's female settlers) to this extremity. Let us be practical. These women have renounced the opposite sex; they have banished it from their heart-stones. But hold! Is not the primal object of every community perpetuity? Can this retreat of women have a continued existence, and a value in the world, under this one-sided single sex system? In a word, can there be a cackle without a crow? We wot (know) not."

The reporter's managing editor was not satisfied with the story and ordered the uncomfortable writer to return to Bathsheba in search of names and former addresses. Bob Cunningham describes that journey like this:

"After almost three hours in the saddle, (the reporter) arrived in the general area of the town he sought, but he saw no tents, no wagons or gaunt horses searching the prairie for a nibble of dry grass. He looked around for landmarks to make certain he had traveled in the right direction, and found his navigation had been correct. Bathsheba was gone.

P. J. Lassek in Oklahoma Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff (2008) openly speculates whether Bethsheba ever existed at all:

Oklahoma's Own Sappho
Bethsheba

It's hard to know whether the settlement of Bethsheba really existed or was just a feminine figment of someone's imagination. Maybe it was a tale concocted and passed down through generations to discourage women from considering a life free of male influence and dominance. While there is no documentation that verifies it existed briefly in 1893 somewhere in Garfield County between Enid and Perry, there are a few unattributed accounts with interesting facts about the town at the Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry and a few theories floating around.

It is reported that the all-female commune barred all males--humans and animals alike. There were absolutely no men, no stallions, no boars, no bulls, no roosters, or even tomcats allowed. The settlement was supposedly formed by a group of disgruntled women that were anti-men. Because reporters at the time were male, those who attempted to write about Bethsheba were forced to do it from afar using binoculars and assumptions. Of course, in those days when land runs drew single women willing to stake land without a husband, and settlement came and went as often as the winds shifted, who would know whether Bethsheba was fact or fiction?

Abandoned house in Potter Community,
Garfield County, Oklahoma

Garfield County, Oklahoma

Regarding the accounts by the unnamed Kansas reporter, Lassek reveals that the reporter's so-called facts about the disappearance of the town were contradictory. One account stated that he returned to find abandoned equipment and empty dwellings. Another stated he returned to find nothing, no tents, wagons, or even livestock.

It is also suggested that male violence (not just feminine fears and loneliness for men) may have played a role in the settlement's demise--IF it ever existed. Lassek also offers another rather silly theory--and with no particular evidence to back it up:

The town had just disappeared. Some say the women vanished in the middle of the night and were either ambushed by a pack of men or lonely for the security of men. I'd like to think that if there was a Bethsheba its demise came because the women realized that strength and independence came from within and not necessarily at the price of isolation.

The one element in the Kansas reporter's account that makes me think this might be just one big yarn is his strange "greeting" by the denizens of Bathsheba, and their presumably "druidistic" destruction of a rooster. Maybe just a little bit over the top? Something about it just doesn't ring true for me. See here for a fuller account:

As I moved closer the woman raised the gun once more, while the remainder of the population held their hands over their ears. Some averted their faces, presumable dreading to see the death throes of another human being, even though he happened to be a man.

I heard a loud report, and a cloud of black smoke billowed out of the gun barrel. Since the gun was pointed in my general direction, obviously the shot was for me. I felt no pain, and saw no blood darkening my once white shirt. My presumption, nurtured by hope, was right. Annie Oakley did not live in the village.

The woman dropped the gun as soon as she discharged it, and all raced toward their tents and disappeared. The chief, gathering her long skirt up around her hips, outran all the rest….

Some miles further on I met a farmer. He told me the village was made up entirely of women, who abjured the masculine sex completely. In proof of this he said that some of his chickens strayed into the settlement, and among the chickens was a rooster. The women killed this unlucky fowl with druidistic rites.

"A neighbor, who had managed to chisel a dugout out of the hard ground a mile away, said the women disappeared one night because, they told his wife, they were lonely and afraid, and that dissension had blighted their expected happiness. They went back to the land of men."

One note to add here. A caller advises me that the all-female town was located south of Garber in Garfield county. Otherwise, I have nothing else to contribute.

This article by Emily Jerman in the Oklahoma Gazette (dated June 4, 2009) also provides additional detail on "Bethsheba" as well as the umarried (white) women who participated in the 1893 Northwest Oklahoma/Cherokee Outlet land run--which was made possible, by the way, because of the forced removal of the Cherokee from the land that had been promised to them.

One of the major controversies in Bathsheba scholarship is whether a woman named Annette Daisey (or Daisy) and her "Daisey Colonists" were behind "Bethsheba"--or whether they led ANOTHER effort to establish all-woman settlement a few miles west of Ponca, Oklahoma, which apparently had no name. The Daisey colonists allegedly settled on 480 acres, and eventually developed a settlement which included two houses and four shelters by December 1893. While the stories of Bethsheba and the Daisey colony are similar, we're also told that both Bethsheba and Daisey's name fail to show up in any Garfield County records of the period.

Bathsheba has inspired at least one work of fiction, a novel by Barbara D. Devault called A Gentle Breed (1997).

Besjukovschtschina

Central Russia (1812)

Besjukovschtschina

Location: Allegedly somewhere in central Russia (as defined in the late 19th century). Difficult to pinpoint exactly where this could have been, as the name is not on contemporary maps and there have been many border and name changes since then.

Founded: As an all-women "state" or "colony" in 1861

Closed: There are several articles published between 1897 and 1901 about this place, but no references after that time.

This is one of those odd little stories I stumble upon from time to time. Was this a real place? Or was this a folklore fantasy, like Sweden's all-lesbian Chako Paul City? (Chako Paul City was "created" by the Chinese media back in 2009.) Only more research will tell. Here's the news account from 1897, which is the earliest I have found and the most extensive description.

From the Free Lance, March 20, 1897:

WHERE WOMEN RULE.

The Name of their Colony a Jawbreaker.

There is at least one spot on earth where women have their rights. If they do not it is their own fault, for they are the supreme arbiters of social and industrial conditions, and run everything to suit their own caprices. The place in question is the township of Besjukovschtschina, located in central Russia. Whether or not the women had the privilege of naming the place is not known. If they are guilty they proved themselves a failure at the start, for there are several letters in the alphabet they did not employ in designating it. It was in 1861 that an epidemic had reduced the population to the verge of starvation, and the women, led by Saschka, ordered the men to leave and go to the city to find work. The women remained alone and began to till the farms. The men were allowed to return only for the holidays.

The woman state comprises a territory of ten square miles and is divided into seven villages. Saschka and several other women, the wives of the exiled elders, administer to all public affairs, such as the levying of taxes, the allotment of acres to the various families, the keeping up of the churches, the paying of shepherds, etc. They also assume the recruiting officer's duties by sending those men who attain the proper age to town in order to submit to medical examination.

In the summer the fields of the district afford a peculiar aspect. One may ride over the Besjukovschtschina domain from morn till night without encountering a single male being. All the work, the hardest as well as the lighter manipulations, is executed by women and girls of different ages. With naked feet and arms they trot behind the plow, throw out seeds and gather fruit. Here we observe a dozen or more members of the weaker sex engaged in lifting a mighty rock; or subduing a bucking horse or a wild bull. Toward evening all hands assemble in the church squares of the seven villages to hear reports of common interest, the women acting mayors being speechmakers, who discuss public questions in a decisive and businesslike manner. This done, the women go home to attend their own affairs.

Besides cultivating the fields they keep the roads in order and ocassionally set up a new cottage or stable. When on the occasion of his coronation, the czar [Alexander III in 1881? Nicholas II in 1894?] released some 20,000 communities of the obligation to discharge their back taxes, Besjukovschtschina, not being in arrears like the rest, was not benefited, and that is nearly the only regretful incident Saschka's administration has developed in the eyes of her partners. A governmental statistician who visited the colony recently gathered material showing that since the enforced grass widowhood the Besjukovschtschina die at an earlier period than was their fate during the old days of serfdom.  

The Evening Post from May 28, 1898 adds a few more details, but not many:

Traditional costumes of Central Russia

WHERE WOMEN RULE.

The Women's Signet says: 'The state of Besjukovschtschina, in Russia, is probably the only place in the world that is ruled by women. This State is made up of seven villages, each presided over by a Mayoress, the whole under the superintendence of a lady named Saschka, who acts as President. There are women magistrates, women preachers, women police--in fact, every capacity is filled by women. The roads are made by women, and women sell milk and deliver letters. If you want to bring action against your neighbour in this State, you go to a woman lawyer, and if there is anything in your house to be stolen, then a burglar of the weaker sex steals it. No place of any importance is filled by a man. This state of affairs has been brought about by an epidemic in 1861, and during which time the men of the State behaved so badly as to reduce the population to starvation. Since then the women have taken the State in hand and made it prosperous.

Other references to Besjukovschtschina can be found in 1899, 1900, and 1901. But these are all regurgitations of the articles already cited.

As somebody with a little background in demography, one contradiction did stand out for me. I highly doubt that this place had both a declining life expectancy and increasing prosperity. That just doesn't happen.

If Besjukovschtschina really once existed, the ways she could have been destroyed are nearly too numerous to recount. You don't have to be an expert in twentieth century history to figure this out. Start with a pogrom-like attack. Then throw in the Russian Revolution of 1905, the first World War, the Russian Revolution of 1917, The Russian Civil War....And if she had survived all that, how would she have survived Hitler and Stalin?

Champery, Switzerland (1922)

Champery, Switzerland (1906)

Champery, Switzerland (1922)

Founded: First mention of Champery in the historical record is in 1286

Closed: Champery still exists as a prosperous tourist attraction and skiing resort--but not as a women-only village

Since the 1960s or so, Champery has become a fashionable enclave for wealthy ski aficianados. And where there's money, there's sure to be men in abundance. Today, according to the 2008 Census, men make up 51.9 percent of the population.

But one hundred years ago, before the boom in international tourism, it was a different story. Men had practically deserted the village in favor of jobs and economic opportunity elsewhere. The result, as of the early 1920s, was a town that was pretty much entirely women. Notice (at least in this account) that women used their power base to buy themselves social freedom and freedom from restrictive dress. But they were apparently unable (or unwilling) to translate those numbers into direct political power. Frankly, I'm not so sure that this was a faulty strategy. Leaving what were effectively token and part-time male political officials in place might have been a useful way to deflect any possible male backlash.  As it was, women would have controlled practical day-to-day decisionmaking by sheer heft alone.

From the Warsaw Union, May 8, 1922:

VILLAGE OF SWISS WOMEN

Men Live Only Temporarily at Champery Because of Constant Lack of Work.
.
The village of Champery, in Switzerland, canton of Valais, from which the ascent of the Dent de Midi is started, according to the Berliner Morgenpost, has two claims to fame; its beautiful location and the fact that it is inhabited most of the time exclusively by women. Only a few officials belong to the strong sex, whose representatives, although natives of the village, stay there only temporarily.

Champery today--where the boys are?

The reason for this strange phenomenon is that there is no work for the men. The little agricultural labor required for the poor acres of the surrounding land is performed by the women. The men of Champery are therefore compelled to look for work abroad.

The women are beautiful and strong. They wear neither skirt nor corset, but breeches and jerkin, while a red hankerchief wound around the head serves as a hat. The young girls amuse themselves with dancing, of which they are particularly fond, and with skiing. The old women indulge passionately in smoking, and fill their pipes with self-raised herbs.

Umoja Village

Umoja Village

 Umoja Village

Location: Umoja, Kenya

Founded: Around 1995

Closed: Unable to find evidence it actually closed, but if Umoja Village still exists, it's under constant siege and critically endangered. UPDATE: As of April 2012, it still exists.

I find the story behind Umoja particularly fascinating. Rather than do a write up myself, I am including an excerpt from a 2005 Washington Post article:

***
A Place Where Women Rule
All-Female Village in Kenya Is a Sign Of Burgeoning Feminism Across Africa

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 9, 2005

UMOJA, Kenya -- Seated cross-legged on tan sisal mats in the shade, Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of a village for women only, took the hand of a frightened 13-year-old girl. The child was expected to wed a man nearly three times her age, and Lolosoli told her she didn't have to.

The man was Lolosoli's brother, but that didn't matter. This is a patch of Africa where women rule.

"You are a small girl. He is an old man," said Lolosoli, who gives haven to young girls running from forced marriages. "Women don't have to put up with this nonsense anymore."

Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.

Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be allowed to live in their circular village of mud-and-dung huts.

In an act of spite, the men of her tribe started their own village across the way, often monitoring activities in Umoja and spying on their female counterparts.

What started as a group of homeless women looking for a place of their own became a successful and happy village. About three dozen women live here and run a cultural center and camping site for tourists visiting the adjacent Samburu National Reserve. Umoja has flourished, eventually attracting so many women seeking help that they even hired men to haul firewood, traditionally women's work.

The men in the rival village also attempted to build a tourist and cultural center, but were not very successful.

But the women felt empowered with the revenue from the camping site and their cultural center, where they sell crafts. They were able to send their children to school for the first time, eat well and reject male demands for their daughters' circumcision and marriage.

They became so respected that troubled women, some beaten, some trying to get divorced, started showing up in this little village in northern Kenya. Lolosoli was even invited by the United Nations to attend a recent world conference on gender empowerment in New York.

"That's when the very ugly jealous behaviors started," Lolosoli said, adding that her life was threatened by local men right before her trip to New York. "They just said, frankly, that they wanted to kill me," Lolosoli said, laughing because she thought the idea sounded overly dramatic.

***
But the problems didn't end there.

In August 2009, the Vital Voices Blog reported that Rebecca Lolosoli had been threatened and beaten by her estranged husband earlier that week.

Having learned about Umoja’s income, Rebecca’s estranged husband and another family member traveled to Umoja allegedly armed with a gun and confronted her on August 18. They were demanding access to the village's land and money. Although she was assaulted by her estranged husband, she was able to prevent him from gaining access to the village funds and was ultimately able to escape and flee the region. A majority of Umoja's women residents also fled, waiting for security to improve. Not surprisingly, the local police chief in Archer's Post, Kenya refused to provide police intervention. Nor did the area police chief in the town of Maralal.

The court did finally grant Rebecca an injunction that prohibited her estranged husband from entering Umoja village. Law enforcement supposedly informed Rebecca’s husband, who had not been charged with any crimes, that he could not enter Umoja. It was also stated that officials were "planning" to visit the Umoja village to reassure residents that measures are being taken to protect the community. Not surprisingly, Rebecca remained reluctant to return.

UPDATE: See here for more information on Umoja Village as April 2012.